During its osteogenic phase, post-ablation regenerating bone marrow produces bone promoting activity to osteogenic cells. In the experiments reported, activity derived from (rat) healing bone marrow conditioned medium (HBMCM) after boiling was analyzed using chromatography on heparin-Sepharose. The activity in HBMCM was shown to be divided among at least six independent activities that stimulated DNA synthesis rates is osteogenic rat osteosarcoma (ROS) cells. Three activities resolved when heparin-Sepharose was washed isocratically with phosphate buffered saline. Two of these were resistant to reduction and acidification and their effect was considerably more potent in osteogenic than non-osteogenic ROS cells. Three additional activity peaks recovered when the heparin-Sepharose column was pumped with an NaCl gradient. Two of them eluted at 0.3 and 0.65 M NaCl, affected osteogenic and non-osteogenic ROS cells to a similar extent and may be attributed to platelet-derived growth factor. A third peak, resolved at 1.2 M NaCl, implies the residual activity of acidic fibroblast growth factor that persisted after boiling of the conditioned medium. It is concluded that the activity profile of HBMCM reflects the in vivo situation where the osteogenic phase of marrow regeneration is probably regulated by multiple growth factor species.
